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Earthquake Retrofit writes "Ars has a story about EVE Online banning thousands of accounts for real-world trading of in-game money for profit. From the article: 'Those who buy and sell ISK, the game's currency, are not only exploiting the game, but unbalancing play. That's why the company decided to go drastic: a program they called "Unholy Rage." For weeks they studied the behavior and effects these real-money traders had on the game, and then they struck. During scheduled maintenance, over 6,000 accounts were banned. [Einar Hreiðarsson, EVE's lead GM,] assures us that the methods were sound, and the bannings went off with surgical precision. ... While the number of accounts banned in the opening phase of the operation constituted around 2 percent of the total active registered accounts, the CPU per user usage was cut by a good 30 percent.' Looks like they got the right 6,000.' Further information and more graphs are available from the EVE dev blog."

Alanis* says it's ironic that people fear using the word to refer to actual irony. In this case, you're good. It fits the definition stated by Merriam-Webster as 'incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result.'

* - Not really, but I am being ironic by using an appeal to authority when the authority in question is the canonical example of a counter-authority. This footnote dropped for the benefit of the moderators who didn't get that. By insulting them to their faces, I am doing them a favor because they now won't have to waste valuable time considering whether what I said is wrong or just unfunny, and can go straight for Flamebait.

What evidence do you have that Goldman owns or exerts any influence over the US government? This kind of wild, un-sourced speculation is so rampant and accepted on/. that virtually any comment about corporate conspiracy gets at least a +1, Informative.